Taunton residents who practice Islam and observe Ramadan are few but faithful

Saturday

Jul 26, 2014 at 11:49 PMJul 26, 2014 at 11:59 PM

Marc Larocque Enterprise Staff Writer @Enterprise_Marc

Each sweltering day over the last month, Taunton’s Mohammed Zaman has scanned soft drinks, chips and other snacks, as he rings up orders at his Star Food Mart at a corner on Plain Street.

The customers don’t know how thirsty or hungry he is. Zaman has not eaten lunch since late June, and has forgone water and other drinks during the long summer daylight hours.

That’s because he is one of the rare Muslims in the city who are observing the final days of Ramadan, the holy month in the religion of Islam, which culminates with the Eid al-Fitr feast celebrated at sunset tonight.

“Other people don’t know I’m fasting,” said Zaman, who came here about eight years ago from Bangladesh. “Most people who come in here don’t know that (I’m Muslim). … Sometimes you touch a cold drink, you feel it when you are ringing it up, and you want a drink. But you can’t because it’s Ramadan. It doesn’t bother me. But the first few days are harder.”

Ramadan begins with the sighting of the crescent moon in the ninth month of the Islamic year, which this year falls between June 28 and July 28 on the Western calendar. According to Islam, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion that reveres the Prophet Muhammad as the final prophet of God, observant Muslims should also abstain from other worldly temptations for Ramadan and they are supposed to offer charity to the needy during the holy month.

Zaman said that for him, Ramadan is a time of self-improvement, spirituality and forgiveness. It’s not only abstaining from food, he said, but also any poor behavior.

“Fasting you must do and try to avoid doing anything wrong and ask God to forgive,” Zaman said. “Try to make myself good. Of course I feel good at the end of Ramadan.”

Iftar in Taunton

Zaman, who is married and has two young daughters in school here, said that he only knows five Muslim families in Taunton, all from Bangladesh. Zaman said he came to the U.S. — first living in New York, then Freetown and New Bedford — for the same reason as many immigrants, to forge a better life.

“We came here for a good life,” Zaman said. “Bangladesh is very poor. It’s more secure here.”

One big difference from life in Bangladesh, where Islam is the largest religion, is that in his home country mosques can basically be found on every corner and calls to prayer are announced from loudspeakers. That’s not the case in Taunton, where there are many churches, and one synagogue, but no mosques. So Zaman takes his family each Friday to a mosque at the Islamic Center of New England in Sharon.

“We can’t go every day because we have to work, and can’t travel that far after work, but we make time on Friday,” Zaman said.

When it comes to iftar — the late evening meal during Ramadan, which is typically celebrated in large groups — Zaman said he and other Bangladeshi families will often gather at one of their houses in Taunton. After breaking the fast with dates, along with water or juice, the families will enjoy traditional Bangladeshi foods, such as a special chickpea dish, roast eggplant, deserts that are similar to Rice Krispies treats and other sweets.

“The same as we make in Bangladesh,” he said.

Islam by the numbers in Southeast Mass

There are 924 adherents to Islam in Bristol County, according to a report measuring religious bodies county-by-county in the United States, called the, “2010 U.S. Religious Census: Religious Congregations and Membership Study.” That means Muslims in Bristol County make up a microscopic 0.16 percent of the population here.

By comparison, the report said that there are 286,113 Catholics in Bristol County, representing approximately 52.2 percent of the county population. And the latest figures show that Jewish people represent about 2.2 percent of Bristol County.

The report, conducted by researchers from the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies, listed Bristol County as No. 293 out of 592 counties in the country in terms of highest amount of Muslims.

The amount of Muslims in Bristol County is also very small in relation to other counties in Massachusetts, such as Middlesex County (5,580 adherents), Norfolk County (4,616) and Suffolk County (7,646), and it is extremely small compared to some of the most heavily Muslim populated counties in the country, like Cook County, Ill. (201,152) and Harris County, Texas (117,148).

There are at least three Muslim congregations in Bristol County, according to the survey. One of them is in Mansfield, with a mosque at the Al-Noor Academy, a middle school established in 2000 to serve the Muslim community in Greater Boston and northern Rhode Island. In addition to that, there is the Masjid Al-Ehsan in Dartmouth, which hosts daily prayer and Ramadan festivities, and the Masjid Al-Khidr in New Bedford.

Otherwise, some of the largest mosques closest to Taunton are the Sharon Mosque, the Quincy Mosque and the Islamic Center of Rhode Island in Providence.

Overall in Massachusetts, there are 21,768 Muslims, according to the report. In the United States, there are 2.6 million. Throughout the world, Islam is the religion of 1.6 billion, making it the second-largest religion in the world, and it is arguably the fastest-growing major religion.

Growing up Muslim in the Silver City

Ashraf Mabrouk entered Taunton High School in 1978 as a junior who just arrived straight from the huge, bustling city of Cairo, a hub of the Arab world where most people are Muslim and there are many historic mosques.

“It was shock, obviously,” Mabrouk said. “At that time, I did not speak English at all and it was just a different culture.”

Mabrouk said while he felt somewhat isolated culturally, he excelled at soccer for the Taunton High School team, which allowed him to connect with fellow students and the rest of the community. After his senior year, Mabrouk made the front page of the Taunton Daily Gazette when he was drafted by a professional club, the New England Tea Men.

“Growing up here I think was one of the best things, to come to such a smaller community to go to high school,” said Mabrouk, who turned down the soccer career to go to West Virginia University. “As challenging and difficult as those years were, there were lots of wonderful people around and playing sports helped a great deal with getting into the community and knowing the community better.”

Mabrouk was visiting his brother’s downtown Taunton accounting firm last week, where a secretary offered him a glass of water, but he politely declined. Mabrouk said that he’ll only explain that he is fasting for Ramadan if someone insists he drinks or eats.

So what does he say when non-Muslims ask about his religion and its holy book, the Koran?

“Islam is a religion of peace, and there are many verses (in the Koran) that if you harm a human, you are harming all humans,” Ashraf Mabrouk said. “I found that 80 percent or even more of the major religions in the world are same. They have a lot of things in common. ... They teach that we will be judged upon how well that we treated mankind.”

Mabrouk, who now runs a diamond import business, said that when he was growing up here he may not have dared to pray in high school or publicize his Islamic faith, but that nowadays he feels much more open about it and prays in public whenever he needs to.

“Not so much when I was in Taunton High, they wouldn’t understand it then,” Mabrouk said. “Though nowadays I pray anywhere, even in a store, I’ll ask a manager and take a corner. I don’t have any problems with that and never felt threatened or had any issues with that at all.”

His brother Mohamed Mabrouk, who owns Mabrouk Financial Services in Taunton, has lived here for 33 years. He has become a proud New Englander, which is evident by the Patriots Super Bowl ring that he wears, but his office is also decorated with Islamic calligraphy and Ancient Egyptian-style art.

Mohamed Mabrouk, who was once an imam, or Muslim religious leader, in Egypt and served in the country’s army, said that for many years in Taunton, he did feel isolated from the Islamic world, “but with the Internet now, that’s not a problem.”

The Mabrouks came to the U.S. because their uncle, Mabrouk Mohamed Mabrouk, was a worker at the United Nations in New York. Ashraf Mabrouk said when his family settled in Taunton, they were the only Muslims in the city that he was aware of. There were about a dozen of them from mostly his mother’s side of the family, the Abdellahs, who later moved to Florida, and then Rhode Island, where he now lives.

“At that time, the only mosque we had was in Quincy,” he said. “We obviously couldn’t travel there on a daily basis, but we went Friday for prayer... We did (feel isolated from Islam in Taunton). What helped is I had four uncles at the time living here, and a couple of their friends, and that helped us as far as somewhat keeping a Muslim community and culture going.”